The Flemish Student Entrepreneurship Panel Database, coordinated by the University of Antwerp and Ghent University, is a longitudinal research initiative that monitors both the entrepreneurial activities of Flemish higher education students and the development of their entrepreneurial mindsets. This dual focus reflects a broad understanding of ‘student entrepreneurship’, extending beyond business creation to encompass a wide range of attitudes, intentions, and competencies relevant across various contexts.
By collecting longitudinal data, the panel enables researchers to track how students' entrepreneurial behaviours and aspirations evolve over time, until 5 years after graduation, as well as how they develop key entrepreneurial qualities, such as opportunity recognition, creativity, self-efficacy, and risk-taking. This approach enables the study of not only who starts a business, but also how entrepreneurial thinking develops and is influenced by the educational environment, individual characteristics, and broader contextual factors.
The resulting dataset provides a robust empirical foundation for developing long-term, evidence-based policies in the field of student entrepreneurship. It allows policymakers to design targeted interventions that support both the creation of new ventures and the cultivation of entrepreneurial mindsets more broadly, recognising that an entrepreneurial mindset is increasingly important across a wide range of careers and sectors.
